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had little girl join our reception class today with no English. I,m sure there have prob been previous discussions i could read through but i can't find them. anyone got any advice or point me in right direction. many thanks.

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Not clever enough to do a link but if you search 'Portuguese' under 'Search forum posts' above, presto! There are all the posts, just like magic. :o

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last year we had 6 children whose first language was Portuguese, so 5 of our staff went on a course to learn basic Portuguese (and it was very basic) this year out of 39 children 13 have English as a second (and 2 of those have it as a third) language, we now also have Polish, Lithuanian, and Macedonian as well as the Portuguese and I can't keep up. 33% of our children have difficulty communicating with us :o

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Wow! I imagine this is very stressful for everyone involved. We just have the one very cute, little girl who is eager to communicate and we think she undertands very well, just chooses not to vocalise. Your sessions must leave you feeling frazzled and exhausted. Do you find the 66% without communication problems are able to understand the EAL children. There seems to be an amazing 'telepathy' between the children and they do appear to understand on occasions when we don't!

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the children really don't seem to notice......... we also have children with communication delay and they all seem to understand each other when they are playing, its fascinating to watch them. we seem to do alot of demonstrating and miming and have pictures and photos and timelines

I have printed and copied the booklet and given to staff today its been a very hot topic and we've got lots of ideas how we can improve

I just wish I could understand what they are saying to me we have one little girl who chats away to me and doesn't seem to realise I don't understand a word,

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thanks for all responses - little girl who has joined us is Lithuanian - dual language resources e.g. sparkle box posters not so readily available (?). She is v quiet at mo but seems happily settled - think their ability to fit in and follow the visual cues is amazing not sure how i'd feel as adult in same situation.

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Hi,

My reception class are 90% EAL as I teach abroad. My advice is to not pressurise and not to panic that you are not doing the right thing. they will probably spend between 6 weeks to 6 months just gaining confidence. Their progress will depend on support from home. use loads of visuals and loads of repetition, but let them just observe. You will have to adapt yourplanning to bring in basics- use your kids to do this- greetings, vocab games etc. My class amaze me by how much they absorb. they learn in English all the time, they come with limited experience but what you teach they tend to take on, without the bad habits. not sure if that makes sense, bit tired.

It takes between 5-7 years for EAL learners to become fluent, so you are just the first step.

 

debs.

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I had a little girl join my class last year, also Lithuanian. I made her a fan, similar to those on Sparklebox, but with things applicable to her needs. She would show me this if she wanted to go to the toilet, etc, and I used it to reinforce stuff for her (e.g. lunchtime) so I was using the words, but she had the picture to look at. Within a couple of months she understood most of what was going on (I think! She seemed to anyway..!) and at about that time she started talking to the other children, but would stop if she realised we were watching/listening. Gradually she talked more to the others, then to the class - she was so pleased with herself the day she chose to join in during circle time! Anyway, less than 6 months after starting she was talking almost fluently (in that she understood what was going on, could join in games/conversations, etc, and even followed jokes/continued them, such as suggesting that the children were the naughtly monkeys from a story we had read).

 

I was really anxious about having her as no previous experience of children with EAL, but just thought I'd share my experience as it turned out to be really positive.

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